Before purchasing paints, buyers typically are given a fan deck or palette comprising hundreds or thousands of paint chips, which represent a small portion of the available paint colors. The paint chips typically measure about 1¼ inch by 2 inches, and recently, buyers can purchase larger paint chips of about 18 inches by 18 inches to assist with the mental projection of the colors to the walls. Additionally, the buyers may purchase small containers of about 2 ounces of the desired paints to paint larger swatches on the walls. Typically, the buyers start with small paint chips to narrow the choices and then move to larger paint chips and/or sample paints before choosing the final paint colors.
Color merchandising may take many forms including the electronic depictions discussed below. Color accurate, physical merchandise, which has a tactile dimension as well as color, is available in a nearly unlimited variety of shapes and sizes. These include the basic, single color chips described above, as well as strip chips, fan decks, designer decks, counter books, specialty collections and variations of all of these. The merchandising may be used by consumers or design professionals and may appear in retail stores, kiosks, design centers or be available for sale through stores or via the internet. All of this physical color merchandising is produced through an industrial process that requires quite large production runs to achieve economies of scale. Consequently, there are long lead times and relatively high inventory levels. Once produced, there is little flexibility to revise the form factor, by re-cutting and re-collating for instance. The color control of this physical merchandise is generally very good, including the control of metamerism which is managed by using pigment combinations that match as closely as possible the final product, in this case decorative paints. However, this type of merchandise cannot be immediately available, customized, or short run color merchandise. Onsite printing of color merchandise cannot adequately meet this need, because print technology has not been adequately accurate to meet the required quality standard. Specifically, the ability to produce non-metameric (or minimally metameric) color merchandise is not yet achievable.
When deciding on a paint color, customers typically select colors from the above-mentioned fan deck or use any type of inspiration piece to direct them to agreeable colors. To find the appropriate color chips, they must then search the store independently or ask a store staff member to find the color chips or wet samples. This process can be time consuming and frustrating. Many times, customers may search the store themselves for color chips and subsequently return the chips to the wrong location, hindering the paint selection process for future customers.
Another significant drawback of maintaining this merchandise, i.e., fan deck, paint chips large and small, 2-ounce wet paint samples, is inventory. Paint stores must keep a sufficient inventory of these merchandise and importantly sufficient amounts of items favored by customers. Lack of storage space can be an issue and the unavailability of merchandise in the colors that the customers want can cause inconvenience to the customers and loss of sales to the store. Furthermore, customized merchandise, such as multiple consumer selected colors displayed on a single sheet or consumer-selected colors being displayed with dwellings or buildings, cannot be produced on demand.
Recently, paint viewing or paint selection software, such as Benjamin Moore® Paints' Personal Color Viewer™ (“PCV”) available either on the World Wide Web or as CD-ROM since at least 2003, has improved the paint selection process for buyers. The PCV software displays on a computer screen a number of standard interior rooms with furniture, e.g., living room, dining room, bedrooms kitchen and bathroom, as well as the exteriors of a dwelling. The buyers can change the colors of the room, including ceiling, trim and upper and lower walls, at will to project the colors to the entire room. Additionally, digital images of the buyers' own dwellings can be manipulated by the PCV software to display the desired colors.
One drawback of the paint selection software is that the images are typically displayed on computer screens, which are limited to combinations of three RGB primary colors (red, green and blue), or four CMYK primary colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) for common inkjet and laser printers. Only a limited number of colors can be displayed and viewed, when only three or four primary colors are used. Similarly, a fan deck can only display several thousands of colors, while more than ten thousand paint colors are available.
Another drawback of the paint selection software is that often a single color cannot be repeated from one computer screen to another computer screen, unless rigorous calibration procedures are conducted. One color often appears differently on different monitors. Even if a particular computer screen is properly calibrated and the limited color gamut can be displayed, the desired color cannot be printed because conventional inkjet printers do not have the capability to print colors accurately and to print colors that don't change under different illuminants or ambient/background lighting.
Paint selection software, printed merchandise and physical color chip fan decks cannot control the ambient light when paint colors are view ed by the consumers. It is known that colors can look different under different ambient illuminations, i.e., to a consumer, a particular color can look one way under one ambient light and look differently under a different ambient light. This phenomenon is known as “color inconstancy,” when a single color is considered and “metamerism,” when two or more colors are considered, discussed further below. Known ways to control color inconstancy and metamerism for color chips and fan decks include providing stringent quality control to their manufacturing process and to select combinations of color pigments and resins for use in the manufacturing of color chips and fan decks that are similar to combinations of color pigments and resins used in paints.
Color inconstancy is the change in color perception of a single physical color under different ambient lights or illuminants. Light sources are often identified by two important parameters: correlated color temperature (CCT) and spectral power distribution. The CCT is the temperature of the Planckian radiator (black body), whose perceived color most closely resembles that of the given light source at the same brightness and under specified viewing conditions. For example, some fluorescent daylight lamps have a CCT of 6500K. On the other hand, if the given light source has a chromaticity identical to a chromaticity point at the Planckian radiator locus on the CIE chromaticity diagram, that light source has the same Color Temperature (CT) in unit of Kelvin as that of the Planckian locus chromaticity point. For example, CIE Illuminant A has a CT of 2856K. The spectral power distribution, SPD, is a measure of the amount of energy emitted by the light source at each wavelength in the visible spectrum. This information is usually reported at 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20 nanometer intervals. For example, a color observed outdoors is illuminated by the sun with a wide range of CCT and SPD from sunrise to sunset. Indoor illumination or artificial light is rarely as bright as natural sunlight and differs considerably in SPD and may also differ in CCT. Illumination is an important factor in viewing colors, and the brightness of the environment, as well as the CCT and SPD, have a measurable effect on colors perceived by people. This effect explains why a consumer sometimes thinks that a sample paint color, such as the color of a paint chip, appears different at home (e.g., under incandescent light) than the way that paint color had appeared at a retail store (e.g., under fluorescent light). Some colors shift more than others under different light sources; colors that shift to a greater degree are said to have a higher degree of inconstancy.
Another drawback of paint chips, paint selection software, and other color selection tools is that they are subject to metamerism. Two or more colors may have the same color appearance under one ambient lighting condition, but may appear to be different colors under another ambient lighting condition. This is caused by the color pigment combinations of the paints being different from each other resulting in different spectral reflectance factors (SRF). Like SPD, SRF is a measure of the amount of energy reflected from a sample at the wavelengths of visible light. Typically these are reported at 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20 nanometer intervals. As an example, consider a green paint chip side-by-side with an actual green paint applied on a wall. Since this paint chip is made with certain pigment combinations and the paint is made with different pigments, their chemical and pigments compositions are different and would reflect light differently. Hence, while both may appear the same as the intended paint color or the paint color standard color under one illuminant, they may appear as different colors or non-matching colors, or different shades of the same color, under a different illuminant. More particularly, in natural daylight, both the paint chip and painted wall appear to be the same shade of green. However, when viewed under incandescent light, while the paint on the wall may still appear green, the paint chip color could appear as a different shade of green. Accordingly, consumers appreciate the need for paint selection tools that exhibit minimal metamerism in reference to colors or paints.
Inkjet printers use dye-based inks and pigment-based to print on papers. Dye-based inks can mix as they are being printed and are absorbed into the papers leaving very little ink on the surface of the papers. Dye-based inks can provide a large color gamut, but are susceptible to color fading. A number of inkjet manufacturers have produced pigment-based inks in order to address the color fading issue, and pigment-based inks are durable. Pigment-based inks comprise solid color pigments suspended in resin similar to architectural coatings and paints, and the solid color pigments, which can be organic and/or inorganic, are not absorbed into the papers, but are deposited on top of the papers and held to the papers by the resin.
Pigment-based and dye-based inks have different optical reflective properties depending on the wavelengths of the illuminating lights. In other words, these inks can reflect different illuminating lights differently. Hence, a combination of pigment-based inks or dye-based inks used to produce colors can reflect one illuminating light similarly, i.e., appear to be the same color, but reflect another illuminating light differently, i.e., appear to be different color.
Hence, there remains a need in the art for a system and apparatus for providing customers with color samples in the store setting while reducing inventory demands on the stores, simplifying the selection and to print accurate colors on demand that look substantially the same as the intended paint color or the paint color standard under different ambient light conditions.